Understanding init scripts

UNIX and Linux systems use “init scripts” – scripts typically placed in /etc/init.d/ which are run when the system starts up and shuts down (or changes runlevels, but we won’t go into that level of detail here, being more of a sysadmin topic than a shell scripting topic). In a typical setup, /etc/init.d/myservice is linked to /etc/rc2.d/S70myservice. That is to say, /etc/init.d/myservice is the real file, but the rc2.d file is a symbolic link to it, called "S70myservice". The “S” means “Start”, and “70” says when it should be run – lower-numbered scripts are run first. The range is usually 1-99, but there are no rules. /etc/rc0.d/K30myservice (for shutdown), or /etc/rc6.d/K30myservice (for reboot; possibly a different scenario for some services), will be the corresponding “Kill” scripts. Again, you can control the order in which your services are shut down; K01* first, to K99* last.

All of these rc scripts are just symbolic links to /etc/init.d/myservice, so there is just one actual shell script, which takes care of starting or stopping the service. The Samba init script from Solaris is a nice and simple script to use as an example:

The init daemon, which controls init scripts, calls a startup script as "/etc/rc2.d/S70myservice start", and a shutdown script as "/etc/rc0.d/K30myservice stop". So we have to check the variable $1 to see what action we need to take. (See http://steve-parker.org/sh/variables2.shtml to read about what $1 means – in this case, it’s either “start” or “stop”).

So we use case (follow link for more detail) to see what we are required to do.

In this example, if it’s “start”, then it will run the three commands:

Where line 1 checks that smb.conf exists; there is no point continuing if it doesn’t exist, just “exit 0″ (success) so the system continues booting as normal. Lines 2 and 3 start the two daemons required for Samba.

If it’s “stop”, then it will run these two commands:

pkill smbd
pkill nmdb

pkill means “Process Kill”, and it simply kills off the two processes started by the “start” option.

The "*)" construct catches any other uses, and simply replies that the correct syntax is to call it with either “start” or “stop” – nothing else will do. Some services allow for status reports, restarting, and so on. The one thing we do need to provide is “start”. Most services also have a “stop” function. All others are optional.

The simplest possible init script would be this, to control an Apache webserver:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/apachectl $1

Apache comes with a program called “apachectl” (or “apache2ctl”), which will take “stop” and “start” as arguments, and act accordingly. It will also take “restart”, “status”, “configtest”, and a few more options, but that one-line script would be enough to act as /etc/init.d/apache, with /etc/rc2.d/S90apache and /etc/rc0.d/K10apache linking to it. To be frank, even that is not necessary; you could just link /usr/sbin/apachectl into /etc/init.d/apache. In reality, it’s normally good to provide a few sanity-checks in addition to the basic stop/start functionality.

The vast majority of init scripts use the case command; around that, you can wrap all sorts of other things – most GNU/Linux distributions include a generic reporting script (typically /lib/lsb/init-functions – to report “OK” or “FAILED”), read in a config file (like the Samba example above), define functions for the more involved aspects of starting, stopping, or reporting on the status of the service, and so on.

Some (eg, SuSE) have an “INIT INFO” block, which may allow the init daemon a bit more control over the order in which services are started. Ubuntu’s Upstart is another; Solaris 10 uses pmf (Process Monitor Facility), which starts and stops processes, but also monitors them to check that they are running as expected.

After a good decade of stability, in 2007 the world of init scripts appears to be changing, potentially quite significantly. However, I’m not here to speculate on future developments, this post is just to document the stable interface which is init scripts. Even if other things change, the basic “start|stop” syntax is going to be with us for a long time to come. It is easy, but often important, to understand what is going on.

In closing, I will list the run-levels, and what each run-level provides:

0: Shut down the OS (without powering off the machine)
1, s, S: Single-User mode. Networking is not enabled.
2: Networking enabled (not NFS, Printers)
3: Normal operating mode (including NFS, Printers)
4: Not normally used
5: Shut down the OS and power off the machine
6: Reboot the OS.

Some GNU/Linux distributions change these definitions – in particular, Debian provides all network services at runlevel 2, not 3. Run-level 5 is also sometimes used to start the graphical (X) interface.